Doctor Zhivago (43 page)

The wood echoed to the hoarse ringing of other saws; somewhere, very far away, a nightingale was trying out its voice, and at longer intervals a blackbird whistled as if blowing dust out of a flute. Even the engine steam rose into the sky warbling like milk boiling up on a nursery alcohol stove.

"
What did you want to speak to me about?
"
asked Alexander Alexandrovich.
"
Do you remember? We were going past the island, the ducks flew away, and you said you wanted to speak to me.
"

"
Oh, yes.… Well, I don
'
t quite know how to put it briefly. I was thinking that we are going farther and farther. The whole of this region is in ferment. We don
'
t know what we
'
ll find when we get there. Perhaps we ought to talk things over just in case…I don
'
t mean about our convictions—it would be absurd to try to define them in five minutes in a spring wood. Besides, we know each other well. You and I and Tonia and many others like us, we make up our own world these days, the only difference between us is in the degree of our awareness of it. But that
'
s not what I want to talk about. What I meant was that perhaps we ought to agree in advance on how to behave under certain circumstances, so that we need never blush for one another or make each other feel ashamed.
"

"
I know what you mean. I like the way you put it. Now this is what I
'
ll tell you. Do you remember that night you brought me the paper with the first government decrees in the winter, in a snowstorm? You remember how unbelievably uncompromising they were? It was that single-mindedness that carried us away. But such things retain their original purity only in the minds of those who have conceived them, and then only on the day they are first made public. Next day, the casuistry of politics has turned them inside out. What can I say to you? Their philosophy is alien to me, their regime is hostile to us, I have not been asked if I consent to all this change. But I have been trusted, and my own actions, even if they were not freely chosen, put me under a certain obligation.

"
Tonia keeps asking if we
'
ll arrive in time to plant our vegetables. I don
'
t know. I don
'
t know the soil or the climate in the Urals; the summer is so short I can
'
t imagine how anything ever ripens in time.

"
But after all, it is not for the sake of gardening that we are going all this enormous distance. No, we had better face things honestly, our object is quite different. We are going to try to subsist in the modern fashion, taking our share in the squandering of old Krueger
'
s properties, his factories and machines. We are not going to rebuild his fortune, but like everyone else and in the same incredibly chaotic way we
'
ll fritter it away and lend a hand in the collective squandering of thousands for the sake of earning a kopek
'
s worth of living. Not that I would take back the estate on the old terms, even if you showered me with gold. That would be as foolish as to start running about naked or trying to forget the alphabet. No, the age of private property in Russia is over, and anyway, we Gromekos lost our acquisitive passion a generation ago.
"

It was too hot and stuffy in the car to sleep. The doctor
'
s pillow was soaked in sweat. Carefully, so as not to wake the others, he got down from his bunk and pushed open the car doors.

Sticky damp heat struck him in the face as if he had walked into a cobweb in a cellar.
"
Mist,
"
he guessed.
"
Tomorrow will be scorching hot. That
'
s why it is so airless and so heavy and oppressive now.
"

It was a big station, possibly a junction. Besides the mist and the stillness, there was a feeling of emptiness, of neglect, as if the train had been lost and forgotten. It must be standing at the farthest end of the station, and so great was the maze of tracks separating it from the station buildings that if, at the other end of the yard, the earth were to open and swallow up the station, no one in the train would have noticed it.

Two faint sounds could be heard in the distance.

Behind him, where they had come from, there was a rhythmic splashing, as if clothes were being rinsed or the wind were flapping a heavy, damp flag against a pole.

From ahead there came an even rumbling, which made the doctor, who had been at the front, prick up his ears.
"
Long-range guns,
"
he decided after listening to the calmly echoing, low, sustained note.

"
That
'
s it, we
'
re right at the front.
"
He shook his head and jumped down from the car. He walked a few steps forward. Two cars farther up, the train ended; the rest had been uncoupled and had gone away with the engine.

"
So that was why they were so keyed up yesterday,
"
the doctor thought.
"
They had a feeling they would be thrown in as soon as we arrived.
"

He walked around the front car, meaning to cross the rails and look for the main part of the station, but a sentry with a rifle rose in his path.

"
Where you going? Got a pass?
"

"
What is this station?
"

"
Never mind. Who are you?
"

"
I am a doctor from Moscow. My family and I are passengers on this train. Here are my papers.
"

"
To hell with your papers. I
'
m not such a fool as to try to read in the dark. There
'
s a mist—can
'
t you see? I don
'
t need any papers to know what kind of doctor you are. Those are more of your doctors shooting twelve-inch guns at us. Put an end to you, I would, but it
'
s too soon for that. Get back now, while you
'
re still in one piece.
"

"
He
'
s taking me for someone else,
"
thought Zhivago. Clearly, it was no use arguing, better follow his advice before it was too late. He turned and walked the other way.

The gunfire was now at his back. There, behind him, was the east. There the sun had risen in a drift of mist and was peering dully through floating shadows, like a naked man through clouds of steam at the baths.

Zhivago walked down the length of the train and passed the end car. His feet sank deeper and deeper into soft sand.

The even sound of splashing came nearer. The ground sloped down steeply. He stopped, trying to make out the indistinct shapes in front of him; the mist made them unnaturally large. One more step, and the hulls of beached boats came up out of the dark. Before him was a wide river, its lazy ripples splashing slowly, wearily against the sides of the fishing smacks and the planks of landing stages along the shore.

A figure rose from the beach.

"
Who gave you permission to prowl around?
"
asked another sentry with a rifle.

"
What is this river?
"
shot out Yurii Andreievich, though he had firmly resolved not to ask any more questions.

By way of answer the sentry put his whistle to his mouth, but he was saved the trouble, for the first sentry, whom it was meant to summon, had evidently been following the doctor without a sound, and now joined his comrade. They stood talking.

"
There
'
s no doubt about it. You can tell this kind of bird at a glance.
'
What
'
s this station?
'
'
What
'
s this river?
'
There
'
s dust in your eyes! What do you say? Shall we take him straight to the jetty or to the train first?
"

"
I say to the train. See what the boss says.—Your documents,
"
he barked. Grabbing the bunch of papers in his fist and calling back to someone:
"
Keep an eye on him,
"
he strode away with the first sentry toward the station.

The third figure, whom Zhivago had not so far made out, was evidently a fisherman. He had been lying on the beach, but he now grunted, stirred, and set about enlightening the doctor on his position.

"
It
'
s lucky for you they
'
re taking you to the boss. That may save your skin. But you mustn
'
t blame them. They
'
re only doing their duty. The people are on top nowadays. Perhaps it
'
s even for the best in the long run, though there isn
'
t much to be said for it now. They
'
ve made a mistake, you see. They
'
ve been hunting, hunting all the time, for a certain man. So they thought it was you. That
'
s him, they thought, that
'
s the enemy of the workers
'
state, we
'
ve got him. A mistake, that
'
s all it is. If anything happens, insist on seeing the boss. Don
'
t you let those two get away with anything. They
'
re politically conscious, it
'
s a misfortune, God help us. They
'
d think nothing of doing away with you. So, if they say
'
Come along,
'
see you don
'
t go. Say you must see the boss.
"

From the fisherman Yurii Andreievich learned that the river was the famous waterway, the Rynva, and that the station by the river served Razvilie, an industrial suburb of the town of Yuriatin. He also learned that Yuriatin, which lay a couple of miles upstream, seemed now to have been recaptured from the Whites. And that there had been troubles in Razvilie and that they too seemed to have been put down, the reason for the great stillness all around being that the station area had been cleared of civilians and strictly cordoned off. He learned finally that among the trains at the station which were used as military offices was the special train of Army Commissar Strelnikov, to whom the two sentries had gone to report.

A third sentry now came from the direction in which the two others had gone; he was distinguished from them chiefly by the fact that he pulled his rifle after him, the butt trailing on the ground, or propped it up in front of him like a tipsy friend who needed his support. This guard took the doctor to the commissar.

Sounds of laughter and movement came from one of the two coupled parlor cars to which the guard, after giving the password to the sentry, took the doctor, but they ceased the moment the two men went in.

The guard led the doctor down a narrow passage to a wide central compartment. It was a clean, comfortable room where tidy, well-dressed people worked in complete silence. The doctor had had a very different idea of the background of Strelnikov, the famous non-Party military expert who was the pride and terror of the region.

But undoubtedly the real center of his activities lay elsewhere, closer to the staff H.Q. and to the field of military operations. This could only be his personal suite, his private office and sleeping quarters.

Hence the stillness, rather like that in a steam bath with cork floors and attendants in soft slippers.

The office was in the former dining car, carpeted and with several desks in it.

"
One moment,
"
said a young officer whose desk was by the door. He nodded absent-mindedly, dismissing the guard who left, rattling his rifle butt on the metal strips nailed across the floor of the passage. After this, everyone felt free to forget the doctor and paid no more attention to him.

From where he stood at the entrance he could see his papers lying on a desk at the far end of the room. The desk was occupied by a man who was older than the rest and who looked like an old-style colonel. He was an army statistician of some sort. Mumbling to himself, he consulted reference books, studied field maps, checked, compared, cut out, and pasted things in. After looking around at every window in the room he announced:
"
It
'
s going to be hot,
"
as though forced to this conclusion only by the examination of all the windows.